


Nanny VS Gardener or Mulch Ado Over Plants

by MathConcepts



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale is unknowingly a little shit, Aziraphale knows jack all about gardening, Crowley has a plant complex, Crowley is knowingly a little shit, Gardener Aziraphale (Good Omens), M/M, Nanny Crowley (Good Omens), also there's humor, and my favorite: mutal pining, relieving tension through yelling at plants: Crowley Edition
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-27
Updated: 2019-11-04
Packaged: 2020-05-20 13:15:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19377454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MathConcepts/pseuds/MathConcepts
Summary: Their plan was simple, make sure that Warlock didn't become the Antichrist. But when Aziraphle takes on gardening duty at the Dowling household, Crowley gets a lot, lot more than he bargained for. He didn't bargain for the teeth, and he didn't bargain for Aziraphale to be so incompetent when it comes to plants.





	1. Don't be nice

The eleven years spent in the Dowling household were some of the longest years of Crowley's life. Not because of Warlock, Crowley actually had a sneaking fondness for the child and for his job, but because of Aziraphale.  
  
Crowley had come to the Dowling household with the intention of being a malign influence in Warlock's life, but Aziraphale had seemingly come with the intention of making Crowley's life a living hell.  
  
  
There was precisely three things about Azirapahle's disguise that sent Crowley around the bend, the ridiculous teeth, the ridiculous accent, and most importantly, Aziraphale's ridiculous gardening practices.  
  
  
At first Crowley had only been mildly disgusted by Aziraphale's disguise, but he only realized the magnitude of the situation when he had put Warlock to bed for the first time, and then went looking for Aziraphale, intending on tempting him into a late-night pub crawl.  
  
He had found Azirphale huddled by a copse of bushes, whispering to them. Aziraphale's whispers had consisted of wretchedly polite and encouraging things that made Crowley gag to even remember.  
  
Crowley had a solemn rule, which was never say a nice thing in the presence of a plant, ever. As far as Crowley was concerned, plants were like troops, and one should be a merciless sergeant to them.  
  
Of course Aziraphale had different views.  
  
"Angel, what are you doing?" Crowely hissed, glaring down at the plants Aziraphale was kneeling by.  
  
"Oh, hello my dear." Azirphale greeted, smiling up at Crowley with his teeth on full display, causing a vein in Crowley's neck to twitch erratically.  "I'm simply telling these lovely little greens how well they growing-"  
  
"No, no, no, _no_." Crowley interrupted, waving Aziraphale away from the plants. Aziraphale shifted, and Crowley crouched down by him, although not one speck of dirt touched the hem of his skirt.  
  
His glare intensified as it swept over the plants, and they began to shiver.  
  
"These...plants are not growing well at all." Crowley snarled, flicking the leaf of a trembling bush. "You need to be much stricter with them, or they will never amount to anything."  
  
"Oh, I couldn't possibly be so strict." Aziraphale protested. "Plants need love and care, and tenderness...Crowley, what the hell are you doing?!" Crowley had wrapped his hand around the lower branches of a small bush, and had yanked it from the ground in a petty display of demonic strength. He tossed the poor uprooted thing at Azirphale.  
  
"Here, take that around the corner and burn it, and make sure to fan the smoke in the direction of the garden. You need to set an example, show these plants that you aren't to be trifled with."   
  
  
"Crowley, how rude!" Aziraphale said hotly, plopping the plant back in the dirt and hastily securing it. "You've shaken the poor thing up!"  Crowely growled and stood up, brushing non-existent dirt specks off his skirt.  
  
"I'm warning you angel, you'll regret not making an example of that one." but Aziraphale wasn't listening, too occupied with soothing the plant. Crowley snarled unintelligibly, and stomped off, set on making the nearest pub close early.  
  
  
And it only got worse from there.  
  
  
  
  
  
Crowley came stampeding across the lawn, not giving a twit for the grass, only caring about putting an end to Aziraphale's latest travesty. He had saw Aziraphale from Warlock's window, and it had been clear that he was up to no good.   
  
  
Aziraphale was making rounds in the garden, with a green watering can in hand. He'd pause at a plant, and carefully sprinkle water over it while smiling, and then move onto the next one. Crowley wasn't going to stand for it.  
  
He reached Aziraphale and snatched the watering can from his hand, throwing it over his shoulder where it landed in the middle of the vast lawn behind him.  
  
  
"You absolutely must not use a watering can. It's much too personal, these plants are not your friends, you do not pamper them!" Crowley snapped.  
  
  
Azirphale pouted, but the pout was marred by his hideous teeth.  
  
"But Crowley, the plants appreciate it if you go to them personally and give them nourishment. I can't just hose them down or set sprinklers, it would be improper-"  
  
"The only improper thing here is the way you're treating those plants!" Crowley said, jabbing a finger at Aziraphale's chest. "You. cannot. be. nice. to. them!"  
  
"But Crowley-" Aziraphale begin again.  
  
"No!" Crowley screeched.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
"What in Satan's name are you doing!" Crowley yelled. Warlock had left a toy out on the lawn, and he had gone to fetch it, and had stumbled on Aziraphale kneeling on the grass, patting over it lightly and whispering repulsive things.  
  
  
"Oh, I thought that if I offered the grass some encouragement, it would grow greener." Azriaphale explained. The lightness of Aziraphale's words rankled Crowley. Couldn't Aziraphale see what he was doing wrong?   
  
Crowley lifted a heeled foot and brought it down on the grass, the ground shuddered, and Crowley smirked.  
  
"You will start to grow greener this very instant, or I will personally tear out every single blade of you and feed you to some horses!" Crowley threatened. He swiped up Warlock's toy and brushed past Aziraphale, making sure to set his feet down very hard, leaving indents in the soil and causing Azirphale to squawk.  
  
  
  
  


When Aziraphale was not around, Crowley took it upon himself to lay down proper discipline. On this occasion, Aziraphale was with Warlock, showing the boy how to feed squirrels, which gave Crowley a perfect opportunity to go terrorize an orchid which was not a luscious as it should be.   
  
Aziraphale was a kind old soul, but kindness had no place in the realm of botany. Plants needed to be made to obey, and since when did you ever get someone to obey through kindness?  
  
So Crowely gave the tree a brutal dressing down, and left it crying tears of sap. He also left it with a fresh allotment of compost, to aid along the growing process.   
  
Aziraphale took the matter up with him later at night, when Warlock was in bed and dreaming of taking over the world with an army of squirrels.  
  
"Did you honestly expect the thing to grow because you used nice words near it?" Crowley asked through gritted teeth. "You haven't even put compost on its roots in weeks!"   
  
Aziraphale twirled the straw in his mouth around with his tongue.  
  
  
"Well, I though that if I kept up a cheery attitude and gave it nice pep talks, it would start growing well on its own." he said.  
  
Crowley kept a blood vessel in his temple from bursting by sheer force of will.  
  
  
"Praise and comfort are not substitutes for optimal nitrogen levels in the soil, angel!" he seethed.   
  
  
"Oh, but Crowley, you should have seen the state the poor thing was in after you finished berating it, it was in tears-"   
  
  
"She knows what she did!" Crowley screamed.  
  
  
  
And on and on it went.  
  
  


 

The next torture Aziraphale devised was his stance on garden pests. Crowley considered slugs and snails vermin, and the bane of gardens. Naturally, Aziraphale liked them. He left them wander through the garden and the grass, and actively prevented and discouraged Warlock from squishing or otherwise harming them, which set Crowley's teeth on edge.  
  
How was one supposed to run and keep a successful garden and lawn if there were destructive monsters on the prowl? Something had to be done, and since Aziraphale was obviously not going to do it, Crowley took matters into his own hands.  
  
Which is how Azirapahle caught Crowley on the lawn at three o' clock in the morning, with a ten pound bag of salt under one arm.  
  
"Crowley, what are you doing?" Aziraphale said sternly.  
  
Crowley, who was spreading liberal handfuls of salt in the places he knew the slugs and snails frequented, only gave Aziraphale a passing glance.  
  
"I am freeing these lands of tyranny." Crowley said in artfully serious voice, and trotted on past, spraying salt in his wake.  
  
Aziraphale had cleaned up the corpses of the dead snails and slugs by morning, and replaced them with lives ones.  Crowley discovered this when he stepped out of the house with Warlock to take him on a walk, and saw a slug oozing across the path.  
  
When he came from the walk, he sent Warlock off to his room, then locked himself in the toolshed and screamed for a solid five minutes.  
  
  
Outside, where he was tenderly ministering to a rosebush, Azirapahle laughed.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
     


	2. Gossip runs amok

The rest of the Dowling staff, minus the Secret Service agents, who didn't give a damn either way, they had to put up with much worse, didn't know anything about the private little war that Crowley and Aziraphale were engaged in.  
  
As far as they knew, the nanny was just taking special interest in the gardener and his duties. Which of course, created gossip. Were they attracted to each other? Were they having an affair? And most importantly, how could such a relatively good looking woman such as the nanny fall for such an odd specimen as the gardener?  
  
The gossip mill churned on and on, and was fed by the increasingly bizzare interactions between Crowley and Aziraphale. A popular gossip shared by the kitchen staff was how the cook had saw the nanny and the gardener frolicking on the lawn together.  
  
The event in question had been drastically different. There had been no frolicking, Aziraphale had been trying to keep a budding potted plant of delicate disposition out of Crowley's hands, and in the process had led Crowley on a chase through the lawn.   
  
Azirphale had been winded by the end of the chase, and Crowley had gotten his Christian Louboutin nail-polished fingers on the plant in the end, but it had been a tasty thing for the cook to witness.  
  
  
  
  
Little Warlock noticed things too, like how how the vein on Nanny's forehead bulged when he told her how brother Francis had told him to treat plants kindly and generously.   
  
"Brother Francis is much too affectionate." Crowley had snapped. "Plants must be subjugated."   
  
"What's sub...sub...joogated, Nanny?" Warlock asked.  
  
"It means you must have dominance over them and never let them fall out of line." Crowley answered. "Never show a plant any kindness, Warlock."  
  


"I caught Warlock writing rude words on the plants' pots." Aziraphale complained to Crowley later.  
  
"Good for him." Crowley grunted, taking a swig from the flask of whiskey he had stowed in his vintage designer handbag.  
  
"Crowley." Aziraphale said petulantly.  
  
"What?" Crowley whined, handing the flask to Aziraphale. "He should learn from an early age how to deal with plants."  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Another popular piece of gossip was that the gardener and the nanny were having passionate trysts in the toolshed. They were having trysts alright, but they were decidedly less sensual than everyone thought.  
  
  
"Why did you throw away the hedge clippers?!" Crowley shrieked, stamping his foot as he surveyed the contents of the small toolshed he and Aziraphale were standing in.   
  
"They are instruments of torture, Crowley." Aziraphale tutted.  
  
"They are essential gardening instruments! Plants need to be pruned!" Crowley said emphatically.  
  
"But you can't just go around chopping pieces off a growing thing, Crowley, it's inhumane! And besides, you should leave all those branches on, it'll make the plant bigger."    
  
A desperate wheeze came out of Crowley's throat, and he banged his head against the metallic wall of the shed, creating loud thumping noises.  
  
To an outsider, it might have looked, and sounded like quite an energetic session was taking place within the shed's confines.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Over the course of three nights, Crowley infiltrated and set up a management system in the garden and grounds, complete with timed sprinklers and drip systems, watering bulbs, soil thermometers, and soil PH meters.   
  
His idea had been to create self reliant system that would ensure that Aziraphale would never have to come into the garden again. But when Crowley came around on the fourth day to sprinkle fertilizer, he discovered that Azriaphale had dismantled and removed every last bit of his apparatuses.  
  
The only thing keeping Crowley's head from spontaneously combusting was the thought that if he was discorporated, Aziraphale would be left alone with the plants.  
  
  
  
"Oh, the plants didn't need all that technological mess." Aziraphale had said when Crowley confronted him over it later. "They should just be free and unbothered."  
  
Crowley was in a hell of a mood for the next week or so, and the staff cited 'lover's quarrel' as an explanation for his grouchy attitude.   
   
  
  
Warlock, as any young child of his age, loved to play in the dirt. His nanny however, discouraged this tendency. The gardener, on the other hand, thought it was lovely that he wanted to be so close to nature.  
  
Naturally, Aziraphale and Crowley had disagreements over it.  
  
"He's a child, he should be allowed to play in the dirt and experience nature-" Aziraphale began.  
  
"Absolutely NOT!" Crowley cut him off. "The next thing you know, he'll be jumping in leaves and climbing trees!"  
  
"But that's what children do!" Aziraphale protested.  
  
"No charge of mine is going to fraternize with nature." Crowley snapped. "It's beneath him."  
  
Azriaphale huffed.   
  


The next day, Aziraphale took Warlock to the mulch pile he was cultivating out back, and let him veritably swim in it.  
  
Crowley did in fact have an aneurysm when he came around and saw Warlock neck-deep in decomposing leaves, but he quickly knitted the affected veins and brain tissue back together and pulled Warlock out of the pile by his ear.  
  
Aziraphale stood off to the side, grinning and declaring that he had no idea how Warlock had gotten into the mulch, and that Crowley wasn't doing his job, and needed to take better care of him.    
  
A child was present, so Crowley couldn't do anything more than grit his teeth and glare at Aziraphale, who remained there, taunting him with his cheerful smile.  


It was truly on now.


	3. Picnic is out

 Thaddeus and Harriet Dowling were not very attentive parents, as parents went. Thaddeus was too involved in his long-term affair with the President, and Harriet was too involved in sabotaging this affair to pay more than the mandatory time to their young son.  
  
Oh, they loved him, of course, and gave him nearly everything he wanted. But interpersonal relationships were left up to the nanny and gardener they had hired. And of course, as they didn't pay much attention to Warlock, they paid even less attention to said nanny and gardener.   
  
Which was a good thing.   
  
If they had paid attention, they might have realized just how peculiarly their child was being raised.   
  
  
  
  
"Come down from there this very instant, Warlock Dowling!" Crowley screamed. Warlock was currently in a tree, perched on one of its highest branches. And Crowley was understandable having a conniption about that.  
  
Aziraphale came very conveniently strolling by with a rake over his shoulder, and Crowley rounded on him.  
  
"How did he get into that tree?!" Crowley demanded.  
  
Aziraphale didn't even glance in Warlock's direction.  
  
"Oh, perhaps he climbed. Children love to climb things, you know." Azirphale said matter-of-factly, pulling the rake off his shoulder and starting to rake up the leaves that the tree had shed.  
  
Crowley ground his teeth.  
  
"You put him up there, didn't you, angel?" the question was supposed to have been delivered discreetly, but it came out as more of a growl than a whisper.   
  
"Of course not, my dear." Aziraphale replied. "He climbed up all by himself. I just made sure that he didn't fall."  
  
If it hadn't taken three hours and three bottles of hairspray, sixteen bobby pins, and a short circuit caused by an overheated blow dryer for Crowley to perfect his hair that morning, he would have already been yanking it out by the roots.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
"You're giving them too much water." Crowley said, looking down at the assortment of plump leaved plants sitting on the kitchen table. Harriet, who was under the impression that they were low-maintenance, had a fondness for succulents, and had purchased several specimens, which she had asked Aziraphale to care for.  
  
Crowley naturally involved himself.  
  
"But the poor things are thirsty!" Aziraphale objected. "Succulents store water, that's whole point of them! They need water!"  
  
"Not that much water!" Crowley snapped. "You've drowned them!"  
  
Aziraphale sputtered.  
  
"If you know so much about them, then you take them!" Aziraphale finally said, and trotted off in a huff.  
  
"Gladly!" Crowley shouted after him, and swept the little pots up into his arms.  
  
"You spit that water out, you spit it out right now!" Crowley snarled down at the trembling succulents.  
  
  
  
  
  
One time, Warlock was awakened by the sound of shouting outside his window. Curious, he slipped out of bed and pulled aside the curtain, and looked out. In the light of the moon he could see that his nanny and the gardener were kneeling on the flowerbed outside his room, arguing with each other.  
  
Being a shameless child, he cracked open the window and listened.  
  
"These petunias look ridiculous!" Nanny was shouting.  
  
"Your hair looks ridiculous...and...and so does your jacket!" the gardener shouted back.   
  
"MY jacket? You've worn the same thing for years and years!" Nanny said.  
  
"Well, there is nothing wrong with my petunias!" the gardener insisted.   
  
"You've planted them in entirely the wrong position for this time of year, they'll all be burnt to a crisp when summer comes around." Nanny explained exasperatedly.  
  
"I wanted them here." the gardener patted the dirt around a particularly wilted petunia.   
  
"Why?" Nanny asked, and Warlock wondered if it was normal for a jaw to clench that tight.  
  
"So when Warlock wakes up, he can look out his window and see all these beautiful flowers, and be inspired to do good for the rest of the day." said the gardener, still tending to the emaciated plant.  
  
"Do you think Warlock cares about flowers?!" Nanny yelled.  
  
"He would, if you would just...TEACH HIM TO!" the gardener yelled back. Nanny of course, had an answer for that.  
  
"He is my responsibility, and I will teach him what I bloody well please! And you can't stop me!"  
  
"I'm supposed to stop you, that's the whole idea! If you think you can-"  
  
Warlock shut the window and yawned, crawling back into bed. He would never understand adults, he thought.  
  
  
  
  
  
Sometimes Aziraphale would take Warlock for picnics. They'd walk to the outskirts of the grounds and lay down a blanket under a tree, Aziraphale would make small talk about respecting the birds that flew overhead, and the gnats that were landing on the chocolate cake that Warlock was eating straight from the picnic basket.  
  
And inevitably, Crowley would come marching down to break up the picnic.  
  
  
"Angel, what are you doing?" Crowley hissed in a stage whisper, extracting a can of bug spray from his handbag and mercilessly gassing the gnats that were clouding around the picnic basket.  
  
Aziraphale looked put out as the small insects dropped dead.  
  
"I'm having a picnic." he whispered back primly.  
  
"You're exposing my charge to all sorts of hazards." Crowley said, depressing an additional spurt of chemical onto the dead gnats just to see Aziraphale twitch. "He could ingest pollen, or get stung by a bee, a bird might fly by and shi-"  
  
Aziraphale cleared his throat, drowning out the rest of Crowley's sentence. Warlock continued to ravage the cake, oblivious to either of them.  
  
"There is no harm in a picnic, Crowley!" Aziraphale protested.  
  
"Pollen, angel, pollen! It's springtime, do you want Warlock to get allergies because he breathed in some plant ji-"  
  
Aziraphale scrambled to his feet, and clapped a gloved hand over Crowley's mouth.  
  
"Must you be so crude?" Aziraphale asked in a embarrassed whisper. Crowley batted Aziraphale's hand away, glaring at him.  
  
"Fine," Aziraphale pouted, then suddenly brightened as if a lightbulb had been turned on inside his head. "I'll just get rid of all the pollen in the air!" he said cheerily. "Then Warlock won't get sick!"  
  
"Angel, noooo!" Crowley groaned. "The plants need the pollen to have kids!"  
  
  
  
  
There were times, although they were few and far between, when Crowley's lack of gardening etiquette upset Aziraphale rather than the other way around. The most memorable time was when Crowely had the audacity to step over the fresh sod that Aziraphale had just laid in.  
  
"Angel, put that thing down." Crowley said, eyeing the shovel that Aziraphale was brandishing.  
  
"Then get off the grass." Aziraphale said.  
  
"Angel-" Crowley began again.  
  
"Off the grass!" Aziraphale shouted, shaking the shovel under Crowley's nose. "You can't step on the grass, I read in a book that stepping on it will kill it!"    
  
Crowley drew in a deep breath, let it out, then stepped off the grass.  
  
  
He came back the next night with a bottle of weed-killer and liberally applied it to the sod. When Aziraphale came around to question him, he said was just trying to help, by killing the weeds, nothing more.  
  
The next day, Aziraphale was laying in sod all over again, after tearing up the now-yellowed strips, while from inside the house, Crowley chuckled while buttering Warlock's toast, and watched Aziraphale through the window. 

 

  
  
   
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


 

 

 

  
  
  
   
  
  
  
  
   


 

 

  
 


	4. Warlock's good start

It was a nice day. A very nice day, in fact. The sun was shining, the birds were singing, Warlock was stuffing his face with cookies he had just pilfered from the kitchen, and Aziraphale and Crowley were screaming at each other in the corner of the garden.  
  
  
Aziraphale was throwing a fit after realizing that Crowley had uprooted and disposed of the corpse of a dead tree.  
  
  
"You're a heartless, evil...person! I cannot BELIEVE you did this!" Aziraphale shrieked.  
  
"It was dead, angel!" Crowley snarled. "And besides I wanted to put Warlock's new swing set in that spot, so it all works out."  
  
"No, it doesn't!" Aziraphale protested, pouting. "How could you know for certain if the poor thing was dead? It could have been brought back to health, but you-"  
  
"Brought back to health?" Crowley repeated incredulously. "What, were you going to kiss it better? Give it a get well card?"   
  
Aziraphale glared at him, then sniffed and turned on his heel when he could not formulate a sufficiently scathing response, and trotted away. Crowley wasn't able to erect Warlock's swing set anytime soon afterwards.  
  
  


Crowley was pushing Warlock on his new swing set, which he had finally constructed, keeping the boy's bottom firmly planted on the swing seat by demonic intervention, when out of the corner of his eye, he saw Aziraphale sneaking past with a bucket to the garden.  
  
Rolling his eyes heavenward, Crowley kept on pushing Warlock, adamantly ignoring the boy's requests to push him higher.   
  
"Any higher and you'll fall, Warlock." Crowley muttered.  
  
  
Crowley went around later to the garden to investigate, and found Aziraphale kneeling in the dirt, surrounded by several large holes, and was in the process of digging another.   
  
"What are you doing, angel?" Crowley asked, already fearing the worst. Aziraphale didn't let him down.  
  
"I'm planting these." Aziraphale answered, holding up a rhizome he had taken from the bucket.  
  
"So why the big holes?" Crowley prodded at one with his high-heeled foot.  
  
"Oh, as the plants grow, these will get bigger too." Aziraphale said, indicating the rest of the rhizomes in the bucket. "I'm just making sure that they'll have enough room in the future."  
  
"Angel, what the fuck?" Crowley said. "That's not how they work."  
  
"Says you." Aziraphale challenged.  
  
"Says me." Crowley shot back mockingly. "Because I actually know what the fuck I'm talking about when it comes to plants, angel."  
  
Aziraphale threw the rhizome he was holding at Crowley.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
"You're a danger to modern society." Crowley said, when he walked past Aziraphale one day and caught him planting a rose bush in a crevice between another bush and the garden's stone wall.  
  
"What are you on about, my dear?" Aziraphale asked, trying to squish the rosebush into the small space and receiving a prick from its thorns.  
  
"Roses will not grow in an enclosed or tight space. Get that thing out of there and give it some room." Crowley replied, shooting the rosebush an aggrieved look over Aziraphale's shoulder.  
  
"Oh, nonsense." Aziraphale said dismissively. "This is a miniature rosebush, it's the perfect size to be in this spot."  
  
Crowley stared off into the distance for a moment, wondering it he was in fact experiencing God's retroactive punishment. He probably was.    
  
  
  
  
  
The Dowling staff were having the time of their lives, listening in on what they thought was the end of a relationship. In reality, it was not the end of anything, it was just a normal spat between Crowley and Aziraphale. 

The staff however, heard what they wanted to hear, and Crowley just might of had a hand in that.  
  
  
"You don't appreciate anything that I do for you!" Crowley shouted.  
  
"I didn't ask for your help!" Aziraphale shouted back. "I was doing perfectly fine on my own!"  
  
"NO, you weren't! You needed me, but you're just to proud to admit it!" Crowley said, stamping his foot.  
  
Aziraphale twitched fussily.  
  
"This has nothing to do with pride. You have a job, and I have a job, and I can't allow distractions!"   
  
"Distractions?! Distractions?!" Crowley snapped. "You didn't think I was a distraction back in-"  
  
"That was an entirely different thing!" Aziraphale objected hotly. "Right now, I don't want you to come between me or my work again!"   
  
"Fine! I'm through with you!" Crowley screamed, and stomped off.  
  
  
  
The argument had been started when Aziraphale took offense to Crowley telling him how to properly transplant bluebells, and had escalated from there.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Crowley's style was, in the simplest terms, minimalist. He preferred things to be neat and tidy, all sharp corners, and if possible, to not be there at all.  
  
This mindset siphoned off into the place in his mind reserved for plants, and so when he found out that Aziraphale had not been keeping up to date with the weeding of the grounds, he was of course, horrified, and appalled, and disgusted, although not shocked.  
  
  
"You're supposed to weed the garden, you know." Crowley said caustically. Aziraphale shrugged.  
  
"Weeds are living things too, my dear." he said. "Who am I to deny them the chance to flourish with the rest of their brethren?"  
  
"You're the gardener, that's who!" Crowley hissed. "Well, a sorry excuse for one." he added under his breath.  
  
"A gardener is supposed to care for the plants. How can I care for them if I start pulling them up?"  Aziraphale said.  
  
"They are weeds, angel! The basest form of plant life to exist! NOW REMOVE THEM FROM THESE PREMISES!"   
  
Aziraphale pursed his lips together and shook his head.  
  
"No, I will not be an accomplice in the destruction of an innocent living thing." he said, and walked off, taking great care not to step on a patch of weeds that was directly in his path.  
  
  
It was times like these that made Crowley seriously consider attending church.  
  
  
But rather than attend church, Crowley took matters into his own hands.  
  
  
Aziraphale came outside in the morning after finishing a luxurious breakfast, and was met by the sight of the pristine, weed free grounds. When Warlock woke up a short time later, he had unique privilege to hear the gardener call his nanny a 'soulless, two-timing, reprehensible, goddamn murdering bastard.'  
  
  
That was to say, the day started off excellently for Warlock.

 

 


	5. Where's the fertilizer?

Despite the snide remarks, the petty pranks, and provocation they heaped on each other daily, Crowley and Aziraphale were there for Warlock, first and foremost. Petty differences over soil and proper care of arbor vines were put to the side when it came to Warlock. Well, most of the time, at least.  
  
"You are and idiot, and a liar." Aziraphale said fussily, cradling the a pot of blooming marigolds in his arms. Crowley glared at him from above the rim of his glasses.  
  
"Those marigolds," Crowley began with the air of someone resigned to a ghastly fate, "Will die within two days, if you don't do what I told you."  
  
"Oh, hush you." Aziraphale said crossly.  
  
"Fine, have it your way. But don't come crying to me when they die." Crowley sniffed. Aziraphale lifted his chin up challengingly.  
  
"I most certainly will not!" he declared, and stomped away.  
  
  
  
He was back two days later, interrupting Crowley as he took a walk with Warlock, holding out the pot of withered marigolds, and giving Crowley an utterly sorrowful look. Warlock had never seen his Nanny look so smug.  
  
"I told you that would happen." Crowley said evenly.  
  
"It was just a fluke." Aziraphale protested.  
  
"Yeah. Fluke." Crowley snorted. Aziraphale's expression grew even more sorrowful.  
  
To Warlock, he gave off the impression of a large, sad rabbit. Nanny muttered something under her breath that was possibly the worst word Warlock had ever heard, and snatched the pot from the gardener's fingers.  
  
The withered marigolds suddenly straightened, the shriveled petals spreading to full, luxuriant bloom. Looking incredibly pleased, the gardener took the pot back from Nanny and scurried off.  "Nanny, Nanny." Warlock gasped, tugging at Crowely's sleeve, "Did you see that-"  
  
"No." Crowely said flatly, glaring at Aziraphale's retreating form.  
  
  
  
  
  
The gardens of the Dowling estate were breathtaking in the moonlight. Of course, not many people saw it in the moonlight, Warlock was always in bed by sunset by strict decree of his Nanny, Harriet was off doing...things, Thaddeus was more than likely with the president, the staff was reviewing the day's gossip, and the Secret Service agents were doing whatever it is that Secret Service agents do.  
  
So the gardens were usually empty at night.  
  
Aziraphale and Crowley would sometimes take advantage of that, and sit outside under the moon at night, passing around a bottle of obscenely expensive wine and gazing up at the stars.  
  
It was one of those nights, and Crowley and Aziraphale were staked out in the gardens, having left sobriety hours behind them. Crowley was leaning against Aziraphale, his coiffed hair slipping out of bounds and his glasses abandoned on the floor. But suddenly Crowley straightened, his eyes narrowing, as a dark mass scampered out from the shelter of a bush. "Do, do, ya s..shee, see that?" Crowley slurred to Aziraphale, waving a hand at the mass, which so happened to be a gopher.  
  
"It's a gopher, my dear." Aziraphale said mildly, tipping down the dregs of the wine bottle he held.  
  
"Issa _pest._ " Crowley hissed, and shakily rose to his high-heeled feet. Aziraphale tugged him back down by his skirt.  
  
"Leave it be, Crowley." he said. "It's just little gopher."  
  
"It's vermin!" Crowley screeched, lurching to his feet again and wobbling off in the direction of the hapless gopher. The gopher bounded away, and Crowley gave pursuit, much to Aziraphale's chagrin.  
  
If anyone had bothered to come outside, they would have been treated to the perplexing sight of the usually prim and proper Nanny running after a common garden pest in stilettos, and the gardener himself chugging wine with reckless abandon.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
"Angel, where is the fertilizer?" Crowley hissed in a threatening tone. Crowley had acquired a large bag of a specially mixed fertilizer on his last make-up run into town, and had finally made some time to use it, only to discover that it was nowhere to be found. The reason for its disappearance lay in Aziraphale, who had thrown the bag out of the toolshed in order to make room for miniature bookshelf.  
  
Crowley, who was a firsthand witness to the extremities Azirapahle would go to to have books on hand, was in no way sympathetic.  
  
"Oh, my dear, I tossed that smelly stuff out." Aziraphale said, who was engrossed in the placement of a set of the dictionary _Britannica_ , and was giving no mind to the fuming demon behind him.

"Angel." Crowley growled. Aziraphale merely turned, giving an innocent grin that displayed his dental work to its full glory, causing Crowely to gag violently.  
  
"Fuckin' hell...heaven..." Crowley sputtered, ducking out of the toolshed and dramatically dry-heaving into an empty flowerpot to the sound of Aziraphale's laughter.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
"I'm not playing these games, angel." Crowley declared, propping his hands on his waist, his sharp, painted fingernails tapping in strict rhythm.  
   
"Oh, hush you." Azirphale scoffed, who was several inches deep into the three-layer chocolate cake he had commissioned from the local bakery.  
  
"I mean it. I'm not playing these games." Crowley repeated, jabbing a singular finger in the direction of the window of Aziraphale's small kitchen, through which a copious amount of hot, golden sunlight was streaming onto a small flowerpot. "Now tell me, just what, in the name of Satan, is _that?_ "  
  
"That." Aziraphale began, primly wiping a stain of chocolate off his lips, "Is a peace lily." ***** Crowley squinted dubiously at the charred contents of the flowerpot, shook his head, and exited the cottage, muttering obscene implications under his breath.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
***** Peace lilies don't do well in direct sunlight.  
  
  



End file.
